You Know You Work Too Much When... 1:32 p.m.

You propose to your partner a surprise date night tradition whereby each of you, every month, plans a surprise date for the other. You add that each surprise date should be evaluated using a set of criteria mutually agreed upon in advance and that all evaluations should be compiled so that the health of the relationship can be charted over time. Um, yeah. Vacation, anyone?

From April Holiday (France)

Touch Yourself, Thank Me Later 11:28 a.m.

I'm obsessed with medical blogs. This is mostly because I've started fantasizing about becoming a doctor, unlikely as that may sound to those who know me. I know, I know. I don't get it either. Relax, they don't let people like me into med school.

Anyway, while reading my favourite medical blog, Vitum Medicinus, I stumbled across a new one, coincidentally (or ironically? I give up) named Incidental findings. So I poked around a little and ended up reading a post called Why I didn't do oncology.

It was a very interesting post (I had no idea there were such dirtbag oncologists out there), but the bit that really got me was about the 46-year-old woman with two young daughters and a really bad kind of breast cancer. The kind that doesn't respond to treatment. The kind that metastasizes to parts of your body you didn't even know you had while the people who love you are helpless to do anything except wear pink ribbons and cry a lot. Which got me thinking about the last time I conducted a breast self-exam.

I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I had given myself a breast exam.

The Canadian Cancer Society states plainly that 1 in 9 women is expected to develop breast cancer during her lifetime and that 1 in 28 women will die of it. Bloody hell.

So this is me, telling you (and me), that we need to conduct monthly breast self-exams. STARTING NOW. Like tonight. Go home and touch yourself, thank me later.

stallers 5:36 p.m.

i would like to begin by stating that my general opinion on women is that they are by far the more intelligent, interesting and well-adjusted half (51%) of the species. i would like to continue by saying that, that being said, sometimes i just have ask myself "what the fuck?"

i work in an office at yonge and wellington and drink a lot of coffee. this finds me making frequent trips to the WC. and every single time i bust open the swinging washroom door i hope to find the place empty. i think it's fair to say, that save for the occaisional fetishist, no one likes company in the b-room. but because there are 40 women in my office and three stalls, there is invetiably another human being going about their business while i attempt to go (at mine).

i call them stallers. these women who sit in stalls, silent, waiting for me to make my exit so that they can go (about their business) alone. the thing i find exceptionally curious, is how long they'll wait in silence and how many of them there are! i figure that the point of the exercise (stalling) is to avoid having to share with any other member of the office the fact that you're taking a shit. and the details of that shit which, i presume, if you're bothering to stall, aren't particularly savoury.

word to the stallers: shoes are your identifying feature. based on your shoes, i can deduce your height, age and fashion inclinations. and because there are only 40 of you, you'repretty easy to peg once back in the corporate space, where i can connect your shoes to your face. what's worse, being identified as a staller, or admitting that you have to take shits?

advice to the stallers: courtesy flush! while you're still sitting (and i know this is getting detailed, but i feel it's important) about to embark on the dark mission, flush the toilet and go with it. we won't hear you (this works best in business bathrooms with industrial flushing mechanisms), it'll smell significantly less and even if we sort of hear and it sort of smells, you're allowed to take shits! it's okay. we all do it. we all need to do it. and for those of you who aren't having regular post-meal bowel movements, you've got bigger things to worry about than judging those who do.

stallers disband! shit freely my women friends!

alanis morissette on love 8:27 p.m.

it's tortured, ugly, pretty and involves much whining. i don't like the way that my itunes seeks out every audio file on my computer and compiles them into some giant playlist that, when shuffled, finds me drinking wine to the sound of my own voice recording voicemail messages in mp3 format for various support lines in the office. i don't like the way that beer caps inevitably end up in my purse and pant pockets. i don't like way my beer is hot before i finish it in every month except november, december, january and february. i don't like the way i can't tan and do burn, in the months where my beer is hot before i finish it. i don't like the sound that the keyboard makes on my new hp. i don't like that my life is regulated by business hours.

i especially hate the fact that if i knew anything about the kind of love this canadian girl is whining about, i wouldn't give a shit about any of things i don't like. i figure that's the way it works, anyway. don't correct me if i'm wrong, it's the light at the end of the tunnel i don't like.

sarah lee cherry cheesecake 11:42 p.m.

is clearly god's gift to hormonal women, fabulous with all of its colourful little frozen bits of ruby fruit and graham crumbs and cheese that doesn't really taste like cheese but is really fucking awesome anyway. i fee like it understands me.

i will not eat an entire sally lee cherry cheesecake tonight. i will not eat an entire sally lee cherry cheesecake tonight. i will not eat an entire sally lee cherry cheesecake tonight.

i have eaten an entire sally lee cherry cheesecake tonight.

shit.

i have a video camera 8:19 p.m.

I have a video camera. When I am filming a person with my video camera I can zoom in on whichever parts of them I like best and nobody need be the wiser. It is the camera’s single most important feature.

My girl, had a number of single most important features. It was loud in the room: voices, laughter, the rhythmic thumping of some stupid kind of music I couldn’t name and didn’t care because she was wearing a skirt and had goose bumps on her skin from the open window. People were smoking, you see, it was of those parties. Vodka on the kitchen counter, cocaine on the coffee table, footprints on the floor and she was wearing a skirt and I had a video camera.

An oversized birthday card found its way to the kitchen table and lay open, pages spread like legs as people touched it, marked it. There were four thick black sharpie pens, three men, two women and the birthday card was having a fine time of it.

So was my girl, though she had better things to do than sign cards – she was busy with the business being beautiful, humming along to some stupid kind of music I couldn’t peg and didn’t care because she was wearing a skirt.

Cameras have a number of defects, the greatest of which is that they don’t capture smell and I stood over her under some drunk and dubious premise, filming the side of her neck, the bits of shadows sprinkled about the secret parts of her body, she had a smell.

Throw the camera across the room, smash the window, seek the floor, Michelle I want your smell inside me.

She might as well have been naked. She might as well have been standing at the foot of my bed, naked, arms swinging shyly by her sides with that skin like the sweeter tasting milk. She might as well have been, devastating as she was.

Minutes and the birthday card was spent, used, page-legs closed and the birthday crowd progressed to the drinking of the birthday booze and as the sound of ice-cubes hitting cut glass tumblers distracted the liquid hearts of the habit-warmed few, I stole a few more moments from my girl.

I spent them in the dream curve between her ribcage and her hip mouth full of lust words. The kind that soap wouldn’t wash out: my hand, nails bitten to the quick, will slide beneath your breast and live in that fold. Will scrape across your skin as the room echoes and moans, will find your other folds soft, wet and warm and will inhabit them. Inhabit them until you are full and I am blind, until you are hurt and I am deaf.

Make of me some Helen Keller oblivion beautiful, with those legs. Throw the camera across the room. Smash the window. Seek the floor.

She squirmed in her leather seat to the sound of some stupid music I couldn’t name but was beginning to like, because it made her tits move like she was fucking me and my camera were watching her tits move like she was fucking me and my camera watched until the vodka was spent, used, empty, until the record stopped spinning, taxis were called and boys began to make b-lines for last call.

I watched her ass as it approached the door, stocking feet on hardwood floor, redefining fiction with every step.

My girl, you can’t ever see this tape.

on what it is to be an urban woman 8:02 p.m.

I’ve lost my cell phone and the walls
are ringing like they want to talk like they’ve
got something to say. The man knocking his rock-filled shoe
against the lamppost says I have a text message,
something about sanity…

Disregard emphatically.

I am in a forest, cell phoneless, making friends
with mute rabbits, stepping on toasted leaves
and looking up to find canopy, to find ceiling,

to find sky.

Mumbling verses into the naked wind on how not
to be alone, on how to occupied, married to my mind
and its winding paths and crevices, its little
habits, like the way it tries not to let me slip
because it knows I won’t endure the fall…

…of the leaves to the ground as the seasons
change as eyes widen and shut, pubic hair grows
and spreads like ivy and then turns grey, as the
rabbits start talking in tongues and the leaves start
charging for the symphony in guilt.

Clearcut.

Shave everything like hair: grease it up, rub it down.

Let’s fuck cuz I don’t want to be alone and your dick is better than nothing.
Give me a rash from that stubbled face, smell my panties with a sly smile.
Lick me clean, lick me dirty to the sound of street music:
140 languages weaving families, pounding sidewalks, rustling change in pockets,

civic hatchbacks on their way to the forest.

Where I will stand and spin to lush green hum of solitude,
Where my family will extend in ants and moss, where I will
Forget your cock and what it means to be reachable, where I will
Embrace sun up and sun down as the bookends of my days
and fall harder than I ever have for nature,
mumbling verses under my naked breath on how not
To be attached. Until a clockwork moon strikes wolves to life and
I fall to my knees and howl with all my red might: a speech, on what

It is to be an urban woman.

kensington market 7:12 p.m.

this neighbourhood screams dirty beauty on saturday afternoons. it is a sweaty oasis which defies sunday, which denies sunday, always. it's part of the appeal. and the drippy, hungry tongues of scruffy dogs are a staple here, pink. as are the women.

you can always tell when a woman is on the heels of sex. she smiles wide, has a satisfied glow about her. she is a bit slower than usual, a little more luxurious. she scrapes the sweaty strands of hair from her neck with confidence.

of course, that's it 5:51 p.m.

the sky is sticky, my yellow room busier than
ever with the electric fan blowing at things...
there is a salt shaker on the table and it has
nothing to shake at. waiting is unhappy activity.

time would be better in different directions, many
of them. i am sick of navigating flat space, walking
on two feet towards things or away from them.
i am tired of sleeping and waking and eating simply.

doing or not doing, drunk or sober, quitting or staying,
shitting. and that it should be chemical is offensive. right,
i should run, have sex, eat strawberries, feel better? flat
little strawberries with price tags and pesticide jackets.

make of my little life a party, dream travel, look bashful,
wear pretty dresses. it's the heat, of course. my ovaries
complaining to the estrogen parts of my brain. it's the light,
of course, not enough of it. it's my blood sugar, of course.

of course, of course, of course that's it.

microsoft paint says, "pride is coming!" 3:22 p.m.

i really hope it's pms 1:12 p.m.

because i'm crying a lot these days, not sure why. not even a combination of bobby darin and pasta salad is fixing me. apples with peanut butter either. i guess there's always wine and cigarettes but that doesn't really fix, it just blinds. maybe blind is better.

can't let go of ani difranco 7:17 p.m.

it's terrible, i know. so nineteen ninety-five. but there's something about her music that makes me comfortable, keeps me coming back. i'm listening to fire door. here's a poem that i wrote when i was nineteen. not so long ago, i know. but long enough that you're not allowed to judge me on it. the punctuation's all wrong. thanks in advance for looking the other way.

we were standing in a bathroom doorway
when you asked, smiling cagily if
i’d ever been gay and if
it had been (here, you winced)
in that ani difranco way i heard
footsteps creaking closer and i think
you did, too because you smiled
and closed your eyes the way

you do sometimes and i was deseperate to say
that no pop culture reference could ever

convey my sincerity, sarah
but i faltered, tripped over my own words
and somebody else’s footsteps
fell to the pavement with a thud
and barely managed to mutter
that i didn’t think so
not in that way, i mean

tricky blue: a poem to the sound of mozart's requiem - XIII 4:54 p.m.

the place is dark, carpeted with latex,
walls painted red with blood. enter to
staircases and ominous hallways
which widen and narrow like the
hot, fleshy throat of a swallowing beast.

there is an escape from the smell of sticky
love consumption - the swimming pool. it is out
of doors: a severe concrete rectangle filled with tepid,
tricky water which appears blue but isn't. women
are collapsed supinely on wobbly plastic chairs.
folds of them inhabit gloriously temporary furniture.

they splash about in the infancy of their freedom:
breasts are on display, creases and folds of skin
barely towelled press them for exposure.

and there is music. a decided beat eminating
from behind half-closed doors finds silhouettes
dancing to a different rhythm. and what

could i say to her? she smiles with her entire
face, this one. white skin taught around her soft
stomach, she walks like a boy. has a serious jaw bone.
swim trunks and beautiful breasts above them.
i see her dip beneath the water's surface and watch
as she shakes her hair free of tricky blue water.
she is no boy. and as she swims toward another
body i notice that's it's no boy she's kissing, either.

i wonder if you'll read this and... 1:12 p.m.

resent me my words, breathe hatred into the lonely parts of sunday and fill the night like a balloon with all of my shortcomings until the week bursts and splatters among the years leaving us to contemplate the hours we spent with him, each in our own way. i assure you that i am no great damsel. on the contrary, my person is riddled with cracks and pounds begging to be filled and lost, respectively. he loved you first and for longer. and though we could spend ages of energy sorting out the complicated scheme of memory the fact remains, i am no enemy.

half-assed attempt at lesbian fiction 9:33 p.m.

she was thin, short. skin the colour of french pastry, as though she'd brushed with a thin coat of egg whites, milk, and had been left to bake in a warm oven. she was golden. her eyes were dark, glistening. her hair was darker, pinned half-up with short tendrils flirting with her forehead. she paced nervously, had great bones. katherine.

brett was taller, heavier. greasy hair brushed back into a lazy braid. she glowed, floated through the room, gave out smiles like business cards. smelled of beer and french perfume. smoked incessantly. chewed on her cuticles. they met in the bathroom.

katherine emerged from the bathroom stall to find brett bent over the bathroom counter. they shared a brief, nervous conversation, a few lines. spent an hour apart and reconvened. katherine sat on the counter swinging her legs. brett stepped up to her, smiled. katherine lowered her eyes, blushed. they struck up a conversation.

after several minutes and a few smiles brett nudged her way a little closer, leaning in to whisper, pretending the music to be too loud. hello, she said, barely audible, breathing on her neck. katherine sat up. louder this time, she asked, are you here alone? katherine, who'd been nursing a plastic cup of draught stopped and stared...tbc

after shower scribbles 8:50 p.m.

the room is laden with flame-retardant jumpsuits,
ribbons, coloured paper in crumpled piles and the child
is swimming in her cervix as we speak, its candied
feet pressing against her ribs in invitation: one she is
anxious to accept surrounded, though she is, by
unassembled furniture, the estrogen-filled laughs
of mothers and childhood friends attempting to soothe
the last of many uncertainties...we talk, as me are meant
to, about the incompetence of men, the wonders of
obstetrics and the inevitability of epidurals. the wine
remains undrunk, a few good bottles sacrificed
on the altar of sisterhood and solidarity. sandwiches
are devoured by anxious mouths as lists are compiled
and what an apt prelude this affair seems to be as we
wait all too impatiently for the sound of the tympany,
the applause, and at long last the announcement...

congratulations, evie!

red is the new black 4:05 p.m.

hanging casually from your frame, tighter the in right parts
tucked awkwardly into the waistband of your jeans, you'll kill me
for not having told you but it was her idea not mine, i swear
we shared a few words staring at your ass as you walked away
and both thought (surely) how good you looked in red and vodka
and both thought (surely) how good you always looked in black and beer

her gentle jawbone and that damn smile (or) words from a wasted morning 3:28 p.m.

It was cold outside, I think.
Cold when I first met you.
It was a month of steam-thick words
and slow fingers. St-Clair was slippery
as hell. Early on there was talk of Israel,
as I recall. But my mind often betrays me
on the details, so I can’t be certain.
Spring of that year was sloppy, wet
and remains buried somewhere
beneath the dark sequined particles of time
that keep me wondering nervously
what I might’ve said. To you, at least.

Longer days found me writing messy
and far-too-frequent emails. That much
I remember because of the paper trail
that led me to wonder if I might escape
with you to New York and never return.
It was a cold Canadian summer spent scribbling
half-finished sentences in many places:
sweaty subway cars, badly-lit bedrooms
and siren-filled streets. I took you home
once in September, to my bachelor apartment
in that neighbourhood I’d rather forget.
You left in a taxi, I think.
You often leave in taxis, I think.

There was the bathhouse.
There was your birthday.
There was that election.
Sangria, martinis, Thursdays turned Wednesdays
and all of the dirty bathrooms in between.
And after having spent a morning contemplating
these lost but not forgotten moments
there are a few things I’d like to share:
I detest seeing you pinned up against
walls by other women, hate the way
the night ends when they’d like it to,
am angered by your had-a-great time
phone calls and loathe being reminded

Of how electric you are, whatever the occasion.

i wonder if my dad knows abortions are free in this country... 5:48 p.m.

he should and if he does, it means we can't hit him up for money. too bad. it would've been a good scheme.